A report published by Payments UK says that the 'Request to Pay' concept could benefit businesses and consumers in the UK by offering them greater control and flexibility over the timing of outgoing payments. It would also provide billers with the potential of making e-invoicing and reconciliation processes more effective.

Request to Pay would be integrated into e-payment capabilities and via APIs (application programme interfaces), which could facilitate payment requests to be made or sent from within other non-banking applications, such as social networking sites. Some Request to Pay capabilities already exist in the UK but the report outlines what would be required and the benefits for wider adoption.

Some of the key principles for Request to Pay highlighted in the report - A Focus on Request to Pay - include:

• everyone should be able to benefit from the innovation. It needs to be industry-wide, ubiquitous and interoperable;
• a common set of technical standards for Request to Pay messages would ensure consistency and quality across the industry;
• the impact on businesses and corporates would need to be minimised, and any proposition should be interoperable with their existing processes where possible;
• the proposition should ideally seek to complement existing billing and payment options to avoid a fragmented billing market.